Remember how stunning Watch Dogs looked when Ubisoft unveiled it two years ago? When the game came out last month, many players said that the visuals for the open-world game didn't live up to that original teaser. But now an intrepid modder has found hidden files that improve the way the game looks, right there in Watch Dogs' PC version.

The discovery was announced on Guru3D (and spread after posted on NeoGAF), the various files tweak shaders, NPC density, camera angles and other elements. Mod creator TheWorse also claims that the files he's unpacked improve the game's performance, too:

I'm a very obsessed person, with many things mainly graphics . Also i'm a fan of using sweetfx on every game I can use it. I like to make my own presets always.

After release and this stupid stuttering problems I started searching for fixes etc.

Then I saw many threads talking about the engine when I realized it was based on dunia 2 so I tried to unpack the files which obviously not worked.. so after searching so much for the unpacker I found it, started playing with it and after a long time of testing I ended up getting the E3 Bloom from 2012 working.

After studying how bin hex worked and downloading many tools to convert files etc, I was able to integrate and enable many effects.

The results are remarkable and are sure to give new life to arguments that Ubisoft hobbled Watch Dogs to make it viable as a release for both last-gen and new-gen consoles, as well as PC.

This week, Ubisoft finally gave us a new release date for Watch Dogs, and with it a new trailer and …
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After downloading and installing the mod, Kotaku has found that all the improvements listed in the mod are present. (The shots above this paragraph are from Kotaku's own capture.) We've reached out to Ubisoft for comment and will update this post if and when they respond. You can see the TheWorse mod in action here.